Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 30 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers, for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experience.
Our panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Andy Codham, Kevin Buckner, and Chris Weber.
How you going?
Chris
We’re on dirty number 30.
Frank
Yes, sir.
And my mouth knows it because I think that’s the worst I’ve tripped over this since like episode two.
Andy
You landed on your face.
Frank
Yeah.
That’s what I get for having so much stuff going through my head at one time.
Andy
I’m just realizing how much 3D printer talk we do before we even start recording.
We should just make sure we avoid those conversations and save it for the podcast because there was a lot of good conversation.
Frank
At the very least, we could take notes and maybe have topic suggestions put on the list.
Andy
If we ever do a Patreon, I think we should have a part where we start recording as we come into the chat before we get going, and we could just mute it for when we have to talk about personal stuff.
But that could be an add-on to a Patreon content.
Kevin
Sure thing.
Frank
Sure.
Maybe.
Go more in depth on the personal projects and non-3D related stuff that we get distracted by.
Andy
Oh, yes.
Frank
So, Kevin, I was thinking we’d start with you.
You’ve had a very eventful couple of weeks.
Kevin
Yes, I have.
I got a Creality Ender 3 FDM printer, and I got that set up, and the test print worked beautifully.
Nothing else did, but I’m working on it.
What Andy was referencing there was, before we started recording, I was telling them about my difficulties with that, and they gave me some ideas as to what I’ve been doing wrong.
Andy
Yeah, because we know exactly what we’re doing.
Kevin
Well, you’re more.
Chris
More so than him.
Kevin
And then I have kind of started to cut my teeth on CAD.
I went into FreeCAD and started designing a tube rack for work because, and Chris made a mention that if it’s something for work, then they should be supplying it, and I agreed with him 100%.
The problem is that what I need doesn’t exist in the configuration I want it in.
So what I do is I work with what are called 96 well plates.
There are eight rows of 12 columns.
Each one’s got a well, so they’re a 96 total, but the first row and the first quarter of the second row is always standards and controls, so I don’t need any tube rack for that.
So I just needed a tube rack that’s got seven rows of 12 spaces each, and that doesn’t exist.
And so I went into FreeCAD and I designed the top for this in FreeCAD, and then I tried to print it and my bed is too high on my printer, so it’s not working.
But as soon as we’re done here, I think I’m going to fix that and get that going because I’m excited to see how it turns out because I’ve never designed anything before and the way it looks, the STL file looks is beautiful.
Frank
Good.
Kevin
And then?
Chris
I don’t think you can get any simpler than a square piece with a bunch of holes in it.
Frank
I don’t know.
We could always try to design Chris’s brain.
It’s pretty simple.
Chris
That was low.
Kevin
I did label the rows B through H because, like I said, I don’t need row A on there, and then I numbered the columns also.
So that’ll be interesting to see how well the printer handles that.
And then on my SLA printer, I printed up a dice jail.
It’s something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while, and one morning I woke up and said, I want to print something.
And so I went into my Loot Studios account just to see what they had.
And in the current month, I saw that they had what they called a containment cage, and I looked at it and I said that would work marvelously as a dice jail.
So I printed it up, and I’m pretty sure it came in two pieces, and I’m pretty sure each piece had more resin used in supports than in the actual parts that I wanted, but that’s okay because they came out beautifully.
Chris
You didn’t have any.
Oh, crap.
I just clipped a bar instead of a support.
Kevin
No.
No, I didn’t.
Chris
Thank goodness.
kevin
And so my wife was helping me to remove the supports, and she grabbed and started yanking on something, and I was like, wait, wait, wait, stop, stop, stop, I almost snapped one of the bars right there, but then she said, oh, oh, sorry, sorry, and, and we were able to recover it.
It didn’t break.
So that was good.
Frank
Yeah.
Got…
Chris
The great thing about plastic, though, is if you break it, you can always just glue it back together, usually.
Kevin
True.
Frank
But if you can avoid the need, then that’s always nice, too.
Kevin
Right.
Chris
Yeah, better not to do in the first place, but.
Kevin
And the way these things break is it tends to be along the layer lines, and so there’s not really much surface area for the glue to bond to.
Frank
Yeah.
Kevin
I mean, it works.
It’s just, like Frank said, it’s better to not have to do it to begin with.
Chris
Yeah, it’s ideal just to not deal with it in the first place.
Andy
We saw your print.
And it did, it looked really neat when you got it all done.
But yeah, like you said, even before you started stripping off the supports, it was definitely a block of supports.
Chris
What did you do?
I rolled three ones in a row.
Andy
That sounds like a neat project.
Kevin
It was.
And thinking on it, it made, it makes me laugh that a couple of weeks ago, I went and saw the Dungeons and Dragons movie, and there were a couple of friends there who I hadn’t seen in quite a while, meaning at least three or four years.
Frank
So pandemic time.
Kevin
Pre-pandemic.
Yeah.
And I mentioned to one of them that I got this SLA printer for Christmas, and she was saying that it’s really great that I got that if I’m printing miniatures, which I told her I am.
And she said, yeah, the detail is so much better, and you don’t need as many supports.
And that’s when I started laughing.
Chris
You don’t know.
Do you?
Frank
Well, maybe just as importantly when you do know, you know.
Kevin
I was like no, no, no, no, no, actually, you need, you need so many more supports with resin than you do with FDM.
That’s just the nature of it.
Frank
But yeah, that’s fun.
We’re glad that you are…
Chris
One of us.
Frank
Yeah.
That one.
You’ve always been one of us, but you’ve been kind of the outlier for most of this podcast.
So it’ll be fun to see where you go with it.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
And I don’t know.
I don’t feel like we thought you were doing anything wrong necessarily.
You just, we were trying to help you shortcut the path to figuring out where the print was not working, how you expected it to be, you know?
Kevin
Sure.
And, and just the outcome of it was that I was doing something wrong.
Frank
Fair.
But that wasn’t our purpose is what I’m trying to say.
We don’t think you’re wrong, Kevin.
Kevin
I understand that that wasn’t your purpose and, but I do appreciate you for your help.
Frank
Well, we do our best.
That’s why we’re doing this podcast in the first place, right?
Kevin
Right.
Andy
There was one thing you mentioned though about doing that for work.
And I think it’s, it might be good to say like, yeah, your company should be providing everything you need for the most part, but tell that mechanic, tell that to mechanics who work at a shop, you know.
Frank
Who are expected to buy all of their tools.
Andy
Yeah.
And there was a lot of other, a lot of other industries that do it that way.
But overall, this isn’t essentially, I mean, yeah, they might, this is doesn’t sound like the whole mechanic situation.
They should be supplying you with what you need, but they may only be supplying you with enough to do the job.
This sounds like a little bit more of a convenience thing for you having this particular shaped rack than it is just using one of the ones that, that are at the lab, right?
Kevin
Oh, absolutely.
And there are racks that I do make work there.
Some of them are have the enough spaces, but it’s not in the configuration I want.
And others don’t have enough spaces, but we have smaller racks that I can use to hold the extra tubes.
I mean, it’s really just the seventh row that I need, that I want to have in alignment with the rest of the rack is right now.
Andy
But this puts you up and above just being able to do this kind of stuff, being able to create this.
It sounds like you’ve already built the model for it, just got to get the printer working, right?
We know how to print, you know, up and down all day long.
But this is something that, you know, nobody else in your lab can really do.
This is now not necessarily with you, because I know you’re a freaking genius and loved at your job, but others who have to fight, you know, to be the tallest nail is sometimes this could be a good thing because then you’re the only one that could accomplish this particular task in this nice, efficient way because you’ve made items and tools that make the job easier for you.
Now, that’s one of the things in my own personal job that has made me such a reliable, good employee at work is that I’ve just been able to make tools that make the job so much easier on me and then makes me more efficient, makes me more, you know, better at earning money for the company, which ensures my own job, which, you know, leads to bigger raises because they don’t want to lose you.
Chris
Well, not necessarily.
I did that for the aluminum plant, you know, I printed a coup… 3D printed a couple of things that made my job, you know, with tensile testing quite a bit easier.
Yeah.
And they still wouldn’t give me a raise.
So I left.
Andy
Yeah, your situation just sucked all around.
That was a bad one.
It was a bad example for what I’m trying to go with here, but…
Chris
I know what you’re getting at.
It makes it makes it does make you it does make you more valuable.
You know, it’s not it’s not your fault if the company doesn’t see that, but…
Andy
very true.
Frank
So there was another perspective that I was thinking, Kevin, you might be able to get a write off on the materials that you use and have them buy it that way.
Andy
So I don’t know if that would necessarily be a good idea to go because then they might go come back with something about the time he spends designing.
I mean, you never want to sit and design and print this stuff on the clock because.
Frank
Oh, no, no.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Um…
Kevin
well, so and that’s the thing is that I and I’ve done stuff like this before.
And like when I first started as a as a tech at the lab, I’m at they were training me about how to do the job.
And they were uncapping specimens and just leaving the cap on the countertop.
And I asked the question, how do you make sure the cap goes back on the correct tube?
And the answer was, we don’t know…
Frank
Oh no. The tubes are labeled on the side.
Kevin
but they’re not labeled on the cap.
Frank
Right.
And I said, that’s unacceptable and I went home and I designed and made out of wood and several several coats of polyurethane, um, a cap rack and I labeled the, the cap, well, it’s really a cap board, but I labeled it according to the rack identifier that went on the analyzer and the position and from there, cross contamination stopped being a concern because we could make sure that the caps went back on the correct tubes.
Frank
It’s interesting how one little change increases your accuracy immensely.
Kevin
Right.
Chris
And reliability.
Frank
Yeah.
Well.
Kevin
So the tradeoff there was I took it back into work and the manager saw this and he said, that’s a great idea.
So you’ll give me your receipts, right?
Chris
I made this, sir.
Kevin
And I said, yeah, but I made, I made this for the thing and he said, exactly.
So you need to give me the receipts for the wood, the paint and the, uh, any tools you might have purchased for that.
And I was like, okay.
And he said, he’s like, I’m not going to ask how much time you spent on this.
I figure if I reimburse you for the tools and let you keep them were square.
So I imagine that when I take this in, I’ll, I don’t know that I’ll be able to go after the time, but I do anticipate that I could say this is, this is how many grams of plastic went into this and this is, and it, and the kilogram cost this much.
So it costs this much per gram.
I want reimbursement for that.
And I’m sure they’ll oblige.
Andy
Here’s your dime, Kevin.
chris
Yeah, when you actually do the math and see what it actually costs…
Kevin
I’m planning on making a few of these.
It’s not going to just be one…
Frank
and track the failed prints too.
Like include them as part of the material used to figure it out because I suspect that they will pay you for R&D costs as well.
Andy
And I guarantee you’re going to want to iterate on your design.
So only start by putting one into one at a time.
And then you reversion it and the reversion it, yeah..
Frank
QA the (explicit terminology) out of that. or the stuff. QA the stuff out of that.
Kevin
QA the that out of that.
Frank
You know what?
It works.
Especially when Chris says half of the sentence or half of the phrase, all right, Chris, you have earned the second slot.
What have you worked on this week?
The last month.
What have you worked on this month?
Chris
Oh, a pokeball eggs for Easter.
Those went over well.
But gosh, they were a bit of a pain because the plastic hinges kept breaking when I was trying to assemble them.
Andy
I was about to ask, what did you do to wind up overcoming that?
Because I know you were, you spoke about having problems with it.
During the print.
Chris
Epoxy.
Andy
That works.
I was like, as the colors I wanted to use, I used, I pretty much used up so I don’t have enough left of those colors to make more pokeball eggs.
So I was like, well, I’m out of plastic.
I got to fix these instead.
So yeah
Andy
That works.
Chris
I talked about possibly printing some vacuum tees.
Definitely not going to use PLA for those, but I was helping my brother fix his car today.
It’s an older car, lots of vacuum lines, throttle body, fuel injection, and a lot of the lines that run through the various emission systems are plastic.
So we ended up just using a lot of rubber tubing to replace a lot of it, but they need to get teed off and junctioned here and there.
And it was taking forever down at the store, finding all the right tees and connectors we were going to need for this whole thing.
We did find them all eventually, but I was one step away from just coming home and printing what I needed with some ABS instead.
Even though I haven’t started printing with ABS yet, I was like, I’m going to start now.
Frank
Sometimes that’s what it takes, for sure.
Chris
But yeah, there’s people with vacuum tea customizers and stuff you can find on, again, Thingiverse.
Frank
Something like that.
Does it usually get so hot inside of the vacuum lines that you couldn’t use PLA?
Chris
Well, the thing is, it’s just outside and exposed a lot under the, you know.
Frank
But it’s not like direct sunlight, so it wouldn’t necessarily get UV damage.
Chris
I mean, they would work for a while, but, you know, if you want them to work with the same quality as the ones you get from the store, you’d want to use ABS.
Gotcha.
Frank
Yeah, that makes sense.
That’s fair.
Chris
Yep.
So that was fun, you know, because we had just, we’d broken a bunch of those when we were doing his timing belt a couple of weeks ago.
And needless to say, you know, got his timing all lined up nice and, you know, I got his distributor adjusted so that the ignition timing was going just right and his car would stall every time we, he’d try to let it idle and look over and there was some vacuum lines broke.
Andy
Oh, jeez.
Chris
Yep.
I’ll do it.
Andy
So when it comes to making stuff like that, I think using an SLA machine would probably be a lot better than using an FDM machine because of the water tightness.
Now, I say that, but I have made a barbed fitting for the cooling system on my printer that is still working and I didn’t even have to use any of my special, what is it, polyurethane spray stuff that makes things watertight.
Frank
Okay.
Well, and…
Andy
it’s still working and that’s been good, but I think SLA on something like those kind of fittings would probably be the most reliable.
Frank
Andy, I think that in your head, you’re confusing coolant lines with vacuum lines.
Chris
Well, they would need to be airtight…
Andy
Which is even worse.
Yeah.
And watertight.
I mean, they’re kind of similar.
Chris
But you’re right, Andy, all I would need to do is take some of that, you know, clear coat over them after I’m done and, you know, they’d be airtight.
Andy
So yeah, that does seem to work, but, but yeah, that’s nice having that option and feeling like you can just run, run those off as needed.
That’s the situation I was in with my printer where I don’t even think they make, you know, a barbed fittings at this, you know, ratio, this reduce, this level of reduction.
So it’s really nice just to be able to print out what you need.
I hear you.
Chris
Yep.
So, um, and there’s still actually a couple of specialized fittings on that car that, you know, we were still able to reuse the barbed fitting broke inside of this specialized rubber fitting for part of one of the check valves, but, um, I was able to dig that little piece of plastic out of the rubber and so we were able to continue as if nothing was wrong.
But if that thing had failed, I’d have needed, I probably would have needed to 3D print my way out of that with TPU or something.
Andy
Well, good deal.
Yeah.
I think if I was in your shoes, I probably would have used PETG to print something like that.
ABS is really getting phased out for 3D printing.
Chris
So yeah, it was just, I have some.
Andy
Yeah.
And I got to give you some more since you’re actually interested in using it.
Otherwise it’s just going to rot at my house.
Chris
Okay.
Well, you know, we’ll have it ready.
I’ll be by for too long.
Andy
Oh yeah.
That is very true.
I will set it aside for the wife when you come to drop off that stuff anyway, away from other personal stuff.
Chris
Oh yeah.
What have you been up to Andy?
Andy
Um, okay.
I have been, oh, my printer guys.
It’s been fun.
Chris
I like the picture of that butt you, you were printing, that was great.
Frank
Not really a pork butt, maybe more a lamb butt…
Andy
Did I mention the last podcast about my printer being on life support?
Frank
A little bit.
Yeah.
You did mention that, uh, you had your adjustable, um, volt, whatever, plugged into it because you didn’t have a good power supply right away, you know, for that.
Chris
But yeah, I saw your posts on the chat.
Andy
So power supply on my printer failed.
It was still pushing 24 volts, but had a max, but it’s not regulating the voltage anymore for some reason.
And it’s a wwitching power supply.
So when you put any kind of load on it, the voltage just plummets and, um, when the heater would kick on, even without the cooling system running, uh, it would pull it down to like 11 volts on a 24 volt system.
So it caused a lot of weirdness in the, in the system because those printers, at least the main board for mine is made to run between 12 and 24.
And so 11, it was still running okay.
Um, but the heater wasn’t really heating.
And it kept on causing a thermal errors because the heater wasn’t heating up as fast as it was expecting it to, to, you know, be heating up because it’s only running off of 11 volts and not the 24.
And so I figured out that problem.
I brought in a variable power supply that states it’s 10 amps.
I only actually need about three to four amps on my machine after all this and engaging it.
It turns out only about three to four amps.
So 10 amps should be fine, but my variable power supply is a cheapo too and can only put out like two amps.
But with it hooked up to the variable with everything running, cooling system, the heat, the head being run, uh, my bed only uses 110 volts.
So it’s only flipping a relay.
So that doesn’t really count.
But with everything running, it was running off like 18 volts.
So I retuned the PID on it and stuff like that.
So it would stop with the, uh, the errors.
You know, I say, well, here’s what it actually should be doing.
And so that this is okay.
And so even though it takes a little longer for it to warm up, you know, it’s doing… and the cycle time on my heater is now really high.
You know, it’s, it’s duty cycle.
It’s having to be on a lot more than off to keep it at a certain temperature, but it was enough to work it.
And it was on life support, which is good because my kids got a play that he’s in and my wife signed us up for all these props that we need to make because she’s really into that kind of stuff.
And we could 3D print our way out of a lot of this stuff.
So I have been printing a lot on my printer.
Um, I have ran…
Frank
Including the lamb butts…
Andy
lamb, the, the, the play is, um, the big peach James and the giant peach.
And so there’s a lot of little props for that, what my friends here, “friends” here are calling a butt is my picture of the peach or, you know, the print, the print out of the peach.
But these items that I’ve been printing.
Frank
I’ve never been, can we stop for a second?
I’ve never been air quoted as friend before.
And our, our visual listeners are going to, well, they may catch on to that.
This is a new experience for me.
I need to digest being an air quote friend.
Kevin
I think the way he said it, the, the air quotes were heavily implied in his voice.
Frank
Yeah, but it’s Andy, you know, I’ve been listening to this guy drone on for years and I can’t really identify when he’s being sarcastic anymore.
Andy
Oh, great.
Frank
Not the visual aids anyway.
So I’m glad that you used the air quotes.
I just, this is going to take a second to digest.
I’m sorry for interrupting you.
Chris
He used “air quotes.”
Andy
Okay.
Frank
Please continue with your air butts.
Andy
So I’ve been running a lot of filament through, I’ve been running a lot of filament through my printer.
I’ve gone through four, four and a half rolls of PLA and printing very large things.
I printed, let’s see, a very large pen, a spider, a worm, a centipede, a grasshopper, a very large peach the size of my bed, which is a butt.
If you look at it just right, a smaller peach, it’s like the size of a softball.
I printed a huge doorknob.
I don’t know where the doorknob comes into this, but my kid’s teacher said they needed an oversized doorknob.
So I printed a big doorknob.
I got a violin that’s like maybe four-fifths the size of an actual violin that I printed off and some fumigators, like the old cartoon fumigators, a couple of those.
Those are the very phallic photos that I sent you guys are parts to the fumigators.
In fact, my original design of the main tube of the fumigator had the nozzle come out before it came in.
Then my wife said, no, you’re going to be using that and that looks like something else.
You’re going to have to redesign it.
Chris
No, it’s a rocket ship.
It’s fine.
Frank
Yeah, it’s supposed to look like a SpaceX rocket.
Andy
Yeah, so I’ve been running a lot of filament through my printers the most I’ve ever pushed through it and to do it all while it’s on life support was pretty fun.
And then I wound up finally receiving, oh, no, go ahead, what do you got to say here, Frankie?
Frank
I’m surprised you didn’t use the air quotes for fun on that one, but you used them for in reference to me as a friend.
Come on now.
Andy
I think I heard someone’s feelings here with my whole friend coat.
Chris
“Feelings.”
Andy
Yeah, I’m sorry, I heard you’re “feelings…”
Frank.
Chris
Wow.
Frank
I guess it’s just going to be one of those weeks.
Andy
If you can’t hear my love through my insults, I can’t “help” you, okay?
Frank
All right, continue with your “play.”
Andy
Oh, so the listeners know we’re just air quoting everything.
It’s…
Oh my gosh.
Frank
“Everything.”
Andy
Everything.
Yeah.
Chris
Oh, your gosh.
Andy
On top of printing all that, while the machine’s on life support, it’s been doing well.
I did get a new power supply for it, but the exact same model number of the power supply is all I looked for.
I didn’t think they came in different physical dimensions.
The power supplies I received, which they weren’t too expensive, about 20 bucks on eBay, but the ones I received are twice the size of the original 24 volt switching power supply.
It’s about the same amount of circuitry on the inside, it’s just the cage for the transformers a lot larger.
But it does…
Chris
Sounds like you’re going to have to perform a transplant, huh?
Andy
Yeah.
Now, it did fit inside of the box, the black box for my printer.
I did get it to fit, but if it was like half a centimeter bigger, I would have had to decage the power supply in order to get it to fit in there, but it does.
It’s butted up right against the back and then right against the screen on the front, and so it’s not the greatest to fit, but it turns out I bought a really cheap one because this sucker can only put out about three amps before you start to get a voltage drop.
Everything is still working about as slow as it was before, and so a little bit down the road here.
I bought two of these transformers too, so I’m kind of stuck with them.
But…
Chris
Can you just like hook them up together and get twice the power?
Muahahaha
Andy
Yeah.
I’m just…
Access really kind of…
Yeah, you’re fine.
I think they will just be put aside and used as a 24 volt power supply for another project.
But in the meantime, I’m going to leave it where it is because it is working.
I’m not using a variable power supply to power it.
It’s just being heat up a lot slower.
My duty cycle on my hot end is still like around 70%.
It’s still really high because it’s running off of like 19 to almost 20 volts when everything’s on, and my cooling system isn’t really pulling down the voltage at all.
It’ll pull it down about a volt, volt and a half when everything’s running.
So it’s not like that’s even causing the huge draw or taking my cooling system off is going to fix this problem.
So I’m going to look around for another switching power supply that isn’t necessarily the same model as what came with mine.
I don’t know if the one that came with mine, if I could find it, I’ll replace it with that one, because I don’t remember it being slow or anything, but it is also one of those Chinese power supplies.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if maybe it was a little bit better, but maybe not the full eight amps that it says it is.
So I’m going to look around for an actual eight amp PSU for my printer at 24 volts that I can just put into my printer and use it like that.
But in the meantime, yeah, well it takes like a good two to three minutes to get the head up to temperature now, and that’s a long time sitting.
Now if I am in my normal habits of setting the temperature, pulling the SD card out and then going upstairs to slice the job, by the time I come back downstairs, everything’s up to temperature and ready to go.
But if I’m in a hurry, that two or three minutes is really annoying.
So and on top of it too, if I’m pulling the voltage down, that means I’m using more amperage than what the power supplies designed for, which means it’s probably not going to last very long pulling that kind of load.
So it’s if I want a reliable one that the power supply is not going to fail again, I should swap it out.
And then just with a magic marker, write two and a half amps on that sucker and put it in with the rest of my transformers for a different project.
That way I don’t assume that can do better than it actually can.
But so a little bit of annoyance there with the power supply that was installed in my machine, but it’s something I should be able to overcome pretty easily.
On top of that, I did do a couple of other projects.
I did build the I was just showing you guys this before the podcast, a new filament slicer.
I did design a new one.
My old one was a little bit more hokeyed for splicing two filaments together with a little bit of heat because I don’t use a run out sensor on my machine.
I don’t like stopping the print, fixing the filament issue and then resuming the print because then you get that permanent line around it.
I’d rather make sure I have enough to begin with.
So I’m really big on saving my old reels so that I can weigh them and see how much is on, how much actual plastic is on existing reels that use the same kind of reel and doing it that way.
That sometimes will leave me with several reels in which I’ve only got 50 grams, give or take, of plastic left and where I could splice them all together into a bigger reel and then use them on a project when they’re all the same kind of brand of plastic.
So made a new one of those, seems to work really good.
And I also finished the impeller for my fish tank.
I made that final impeller and I put it in and my water flow does increase about the same as it was when I just did that simple add on to the existing impeller.
It’s only about as good as that and so that’s disappointing.
That’s not good enough to where it should be.
I’m going from about 100 liters per hour up to maybe 150 liters per hour.
This size system should be about 400 when you look at other tank, other filter tanks.
So I’ve decided to go a different route.
I’m just going to replace the pump.
I decided to, instead of using a proper aquarium pumps, which are often designed for the pump to be submerged instead of the pump having an inlet, which was the way my filter tank works.
There’s an inlet and an outlet for a pump and I need that style of pump, not one that’s submerged and that’s pretty much what all the aquarium pumps are, are submergeable ones.
So I looked around a lot, I’ve been looking around for a lot for a while and I decided to go with a hot water circulator pump for a water heater and that right there will push anywhere from the 400 minimum up to 1200 maximum.
So it can be adjusted down to do what this size system should be able to do.
It’s designed to be ran 24 seven and it’s designed to be a quiet pump, which will fit right in with these systems being quiet for aquariums.
Chris
So and it’s more than what you need.
Andy
Yeah.
If I ever want a supercharger, I’d be able to crank it up to the 1200, but if I’ve noticed anything with fish tanks, just overpowering things only ends up with dead fish.
So let’s just stick to the correct numbers there.
Frank
They’re a little small to be raising for food.
Andy
So yeah, no kidding, plus I love my fish, but so we’re going to go that route.
However, that means I will be able to 3D print an adapter for my canister because the plastic piece that comes out of the bottom of my canister for the outlet is the pump.
And so I can’t necessarily use that to adapt to this new pump.
So I get to sit down and make a adapter and I’m kind of excited to do that.
I’m going to 3D print a good quality hefty adapter and then I’m going to spray it with the spray the inside with that silicone spray, which I did check once cured.
It’s fine for an aquarium use.
And so I could use whatever kind of plastic I want in this case, I will probably be making out out of TPU so I can have the strength of pulling it out and moving it around without having to worry about the adapter breaking and make it out of TPU, which isn’t good for fish, but then the silicone spray will seal it off for that and going with that style pump and that should fix my whole issue and that will be a 30 recycling pump instead of buying a new canister kit that is proper that I need, which is about30recyclingpumpinsteadofbuyinganewcanisterkitthatisproperthatIneed,whichisabout100 to 150. For a Hokie job is about150.ForaHokiejobisabout80 total for everything, so it’s still a good deal even after having to go this route.
Frank
But you also have experience on it, so moving forward, you’ll be able to save money exponentially.
Andy
Yeah, yeah, hopefully, hopefully.
Frank
Ideally.
Andy
But that’s that’s been my gig.
I’ve been printing a lot of plastic, figuring I usually only print size the size of this impeller, I guess probably yeah, yeah, not very big stuff, I mean…
Frank
Two centimeters across maybe.
Andy
Yeah, they’re all that kind of size that printing the big stuff has been kind of a fun experience.
It’s not something I usually do and it’s nice to know the printer can do it.
In fact, I have a my very first designed object was a real holder for my printer and I made it so it hooks up to the top of my printer and stays there under its own weight.
Just when it’s got a real on it, it binds to the top of the the gantry and it holds it right there and it’s been working absolutely wonderful.
However, when I originally designed it, I didn’t think that you know, having it up there would interfere with my gantry, I just, you know, I didn’t know, but my gantry is limited to only about 300 centimeters.
This last big prints, I’ve been needing to print larger than that and it was nice to see that when the printer gantry got all the way up to the top, it just moved my real holder out of the way, just kind of lifted it up.
And then when it was done and came back down, it just sat back down where it was supposed to be.
So even though it was in the way and stuff, I don’t think I’m going to change it.
I think I’m just going to keep on going with it because it worked okay.
Chris
You hear clunk, clunk, clunk.
Hey, dad, you prints done.
Andy
Yeah.
But if you guys look at my pictures, you can see where I’ve taken the real off of the real holder and I’ve got it just sitting into inside of my open, uh, dehydrator.
That way plastic could be pulled off the real and the real will just kind of dance around inside of the dehydrator.
But it’s going up around where the real used to go and then down into the printer.
That way when it does go up and finally hits that, it’s not lifting up the entire real of plastic as well and, you know, deindexing something or something, so.
Frank
Cause that would be unfortunate once you get to something that tall for it to fail for something stupid.
Andy
Yeah.
No kidding.
No kidding.
So what have you been working on, Frank?
Frank
Um, well, I did those eggs that we were talking about.
I actually did three sets of those in, um, we had, uh, I can’t remember.
The, the softer colors like the, the Easter colors.
Chris
Pastels?
Frank
Pastels.
Yes.
I had a pastel green, blue and pink, um, did a set of those eggs out of each of those.
And then because at one point I was fighting the green for some of them to print at least passively.
Well, I ran off some, uh, flexi bunnies, um, so I could think about the eggs for a little bit and see if I can come up with a solution.
Um, and then I took them to Easter festivities with my wife’s family and all of my sister in law’s family, um, her sister in law and all that stuff.
They just absolutely loved them.
Um, actually I saw a project that Carl did a couple of years ago while he was there.
He, he got kind of big for a little while in the, uh, nested cube tests that you can do to test your ability to design and have fun and all that.
And it’s cubes that are inside of each other.
So they, they spin individually, but they don’t come out.
Um, he did a design that was kind of like that with Easter eggs.
So it was nested eggs inside of each other.
It was fun.
Um, also after the Easter eggs, um, he did a design that was kind of like that with Easter or the Easter stuff was done.
I decided that rather than storing all of those Easter, all of that Easter plastic, I just, uh, designed real quick some little organization trays for my wife’s puzzles.
Um, she’s gotten into puzzling quite a bit lately actually and has started a procedure where she separates like colors and, you know, all of that so that she can zone a little better while she’s putting them together.
And she actually, um, wanted some trays to help separate everything.
So I did that.
Um, and actually for the first time in a long time, my printer is off and resting.
And it’s weird because I just realized that I haven’t heard it in the background and that’s been kind of messing with my head.
Um, but yeah, that’s everything I’ve done.
Um, been a slower couple of weeks for me.
I’m okay with that though.
Andy
Nice.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, that’s good to hear.
Um, so this week, since we’re back in the swing, welcome back Chris.
I don’t think, oh, Andy’s little violin.
Andy
Yeah, just outside the room for a second, I wanted to show you how the violin turned out.
Frank
Yeah, that looks good.
Kevin
It looks very good.
Frank
Can’t even see the seam that you, well, could barely see the seam before, but, uh…
Andy
Yeah, when you really start pointing it out, you can kind of see it right there.
Frank
Still.
Andy
The wife hasn’t painted it yet, so, uh, it’s all white plastic.
Frank
Still, that’s going to look great when, especially on stage.
Andy
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah, that’s, there, nobody’s going to be tell, be able to tell that it’s not real.
Andy
Yeah.
I think so.
And I got a bow for it that the wife has used, um, some, uh, what is it called that you use for making your stuff, Kevin, that you’re doing for your, uh, wow, I lost all my vocabulary.
Yarn, not yarn.
What’s not yarn?
Oh, it is yarn.
She’s going to use yarn for the bow.
Frank
For the bow.
Gotcha.
Andy
And then this has got like fake strings on it, so it still kind of looks good.
Chris
Oh, you didn’t have any, you didn’t have any cats to gut.
Frank
I think the closest cat he knows is yours and we don’t want to do that.
Chris
She’s a sweetheart.
Don’t touch my kitty.
Frank
No.
Agreed.
Well, we do have a topic this week, um, which unironically ended up being family requests and reactions.
Andy
Yeah.
Oh, we’ve got a lot of those.
Frank
Um, I think we, we’ve iterated a few times that it’s, it’s interesting to write that line between the stuff that we want to do because it’s fun for us and the stuff that the spouses or the kids have said, Hey, can we do this?
And you go, I mean, we could actually, uh, mostly the ones that stand out.
I mean, Chris has done some stuff for his family, but, uh, Kevin and Andy, you guys have done, especially with the play and with the, the figurines have been doing a lot of projects for the fam.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Andy
My wife saw some of the stuff that Chris was printing, the nice colorful PLA that he’s got and made me get some of that kind of PLA so I could print her a, a dragon thing on it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I air quote maybe because we both know I love to buy stuff.
I don’t like to buy colors though.
If you look at all of my filament, it’s black or white.
That’s it.
That’s it for Andy.
That’s all I need.
Frank
Well, and it is easy to paint.
If you’re going to paint it anyway, it doesn’t matter what color it comes out.
It does it.
Andy
Yep.
That’s very true.
Frank
Um, well, yeah, I guess I summarized it enough.
Did you guys want to talk about anything that you’ve run off of the family?
Andy
Um, well, there’s been a lot of toys and stuff that I personally have done for the kids every once in a while.
I feel like a lot of the time you’re telling them, no, because they just want to want you to print something that they’re going to play with for, for five minutes and then lose.
So for my kids, if they want me to print something, I always tell them, okay, you got to go in and show me that you still have the last like three toys that you’ve asked me to print for you.
And if you can find all three toys, then maybe I’ll consider it, you know, but I don’t want to just print stuff off that turns out to be garbage later.
However, whenever I have something like, if I make a mis-measurement or something like that and end up with something that’s garbage that won’t work for me, but did print well, I usually offer it to the kids, say, do you want this?
Um, because they think it’s neat because it’s 3D printed, you know, and we’ll often take it.
And then when I find it on the floor a week later and it goes in the garbage, it’s, you know, back to where it originally was going to go, but Sure.
When it comes to kids, they seem to want you to print everything.
Frank
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
I learned that with my nephews, since me and my wife don’t have any of our own, they almost every time I see them, they’re like, Hey, can you print this off for me?
It’s like, well, your birthday is coming up or Christmas is coming or something like that.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Kevin, didn’t you mention that your wife asked you actually recently to do something?
Kevin
Yeah, it was actually about five minutes after you put on the chat that today’s topic was going to be family requests and reactions came up to me and said, Hey, we’ve got these two art plates that we need to display.
Would you be able to print stands for them?
And I said, I absolutely could do that soon as I get the FDM printer working.
Chris
Now you have the ability for big stuff.
Kevin
Yes.
Yes.
That’s why I got the FDM printer was because, you know, I really like the detail I can get on the little things with the SLA printer.
But sometimes I just want to print something big that I’m limited to.
I can’t really do that very well with the SLA printer.
Andy
Yeah…
Frank
for sure.
Andy
That is true.
But yeah, there’s been a lot of things.
Chris
So like, have you guys had any fun reactions from stuff you’ve printed just for yourself?
Like you printed something and then the family goes, Oh, hey, that’s really, really cool.
Or, you know, something like that.
Frank
First couple of benchies were like that for me.
My wife was like, Oh, these are awesome.
It’s like, this is a test.
I was going to throw it away.
Andy
Let me ask, let me ask you guys, Chris, do you print a lot of benches for testing your printer whenever you fix someone’s or something?
Chris
No.
Andy
Okay.
I was just curious if anybody else out there has a bunch of old benches all in their kids’ bath toys collection.
And benches don’t float very good either.
So they’re kind of a little bit of a disappointing kind of boat, you know, they’re just kind of throw looks, but my kids love to play with them in the bath.
There’s a lot of them in the bath.
Frank
Well, and so I recently watched a video where somebody, no, maybe it was an article I read.
Anyway, they were talking about this challenge that they had found somewhere.
And number, so fair warning, do not Google “ship challenge.”
Andy
Okay.
Kevin
Okay.
Frank
Because you will not get ships, like boats, you will get relationship art, and that will be like everything that comes up.
And it was frustrating for like 10 minutes until I decided to stop looking.
But I kind of liked the idea of finding one of these ship design challenges and using it as kind of a pathway to learn how to 3D model better, but with boats and that sort of thing that you want to put in the tub, I think that a 3D modeler would be great for designing something that is able to float and print stuff like that out for the kids.
So…
Andy
Especially if you make it out of water soluble plastic, make the best benchy that you ever could, they’re going to want to have forever and you make it out of water soluble stuff.
Chris
It’s like giving a raccoon cotton candy.
That sounds like something Chris would do with all his comments about how about we encase the gift in the thing we’re printing.
Oh yeah.
So I had an awesome idea yesterday because I was thinking of gifts for my father-in-law because his birthday is coming up and he likes to pull pranks, right?
So I was going to prank gift him back by putting his gift inside a 3D printed brick or box or something that has no way to open it aside from breaking it.
Andy
Okay.
Have you seen those gift boxes that people have designed that’s got like 100 or 200 separate little screws?
You got to unscrew to dismantle the box, comes with a little tool and stuff like that.
Frank
I like the puzzle boxes for sure.
Another one that I’ve seen is they’re periodically been even on Thingiverse where there’s like a mechanical contrivance where you spin it and like the flower blooms and inside has got the gift or whatever and it’s like that’s fun.
Andy
Yeah, those are kind of neat stuff.
Frank
So yeah, you can do nested puzzle boxes or you can do like a, what was it, the screw box.
Did I share that with you guys?
Andy
Yeah, that’s what I’m, oh maybe not what I’m talking about.
Is it the one that’s got like dozens and dozens of screws?
Yeah, the guy put like 150 screws or something in the box and the whole point was you have to unscrew all the little boxes and flip it over and take the tray off and unscrew all those and spend an hour to get to the gift that’s at the very center.
Andy
Yeah, I could definitely see Chris doing stuff like that.
Chris
Yeah, I’m thinking I’m going to put it in a 3D printed brick of some sort and then I’m going to layer it with like mache and maybe put it inside of a glued up wood box or something on top of that and I’m not going to go so far as to weld it in a cage or something like that, but that would be, that’s a little extreme I think.
Andy
if you’re going to encourage them to get the angle grinder out.
You got to have the hardest one near the center so they won’t use that tool starting off, you know, after they get through the metal cage and they got an angle grinder on their hands, everything else is coming off the same way and all right.
Frank
I don’t even need to do layers.
I’m just going to go straight into the center with this thing.
Chris
Well, you know, he’s the guy, he used to, he used to put my gifts in layers and layers of duct tape and so I always, it didn’t always, he thought it would be great, but I always kept a pocket knife on me so it wasn’t like all that bad ever.
Frank
My mother-in-law likes to give gifts as if they were being shipped around the world first.
And she will use half a roll of the clear tape to tape up the box and to put the wrapping paper on.
Andy
Okay, okay.
Frank
It’s actually mildly amusing because her daughters call it out constantly, mom, you don’t need this, you don’t need to use the packing tape to put the gift wrap on for one.
For two, you don’t need to seal up every hole for the gift.
It’s supposed to be torn into.
Andy
Yeah.
Kevin
I was like, I know I don’t need to.
Frank
I would accept if she was doing it on purpose, but I have never once gotten the impression that she’s doing it specifically to, you know, prank her kids.
Andy
Yeah.
You’re talking about…
Chris
Talking about gifts.
I know that I’ve been asked by the in-laws here and there to have things 3D printed and so I will just, you know, print it and it is part of their, you know, birthday gifts or Easter or whatever holiday gift.
Yeah.
Yeah, that does work.
I think I’ve printed one of those two puzzle boxes that I made back in the day for a family white elephant gift thing before.
Frank
Okay.
Kevin
Nice.
That was a fun little thing.
I was back when I first got my 3D printer.
So 3D printed stuff was more neat because it was 3D printed, not nowadays where you are.
Frank
More novelty than…
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
Well, and that’s the thing is like for people that don’t have a 3D printer, you know, it’s still kind of is a novelty, you know, at least I know that that’s the way my family sees it.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Yeah.
Andy
It’s neat that it is. Cause from my perspective, like you see something, I see something 3D printed now and I know if I’m like buying something or something that’s 3D printed, I know all the flaws behind a 3D printed part.
Frank
You’ll be a little more critical of it than…
Andy
Exactly.
You’re going to look at it and go like, I don’t know, man, you did it again.
I mean, that stress point is right along layer lines.
It’s going to snap on me.
I need something.
Do you have something molded instead?
Frank
If you’re going to sell this, you should probably do a little bit of post.
Andy
Yeah.
Yeah.
No kidding.
No kidding.
Chris
Can I just see it for a minute?
I just bought this little mole.
I’m going to just see it for a minute.
Andy
How about you just send me the model instead then instead of shipping me the product?
I’ll pay you for the model.
Frank
I’ll even pay you a couple of bucks for the model, but I’ll do it myself.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Well, now, and that’s assuming that we didn’t spend three months looking for a model or redesigning it ourselves in the first place.
Andy
Very true.
Yeah.
If someone could buy a model of it, well, I was going to say, if someone could buy a model of it, we could sit and model of ourselves, but then I’m thinking about all the figurines and stuff that Kev gets and stuff, and that’s way above my skill level.
Frank
It’s a little involved, to be sure.
But with both me and Kevin being interested in this modeling perspective, it seems like it’s going to be a fun road to go down, too.
Kevin
Another thing that my eldest son said to me just the other day was, hey, you could use your 3D printer to print up a chess set.
I kind of laughed and said, yeah, I’m already, that’s kind of one of the things I had in mind when I got one, the FDM capability will make that easier to print the bigger parts and the drawers that I want to do, but the pieces themselves, I’m sure I’m still going to use the SLA for.
Andy
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
It’s got the best of all worlds.
Kevin
Yes.
Andy
I’m kind of excited for Kevin to get his FDM up and going, being able to use it as a normal printer along with his SLA.
That just makes me want to have an SLA more.
Chris
Yeah.
Andy
I’m going to be jealous.
Chris
I know without a shadow of a doubt that if I did get an SLA, that I would make a mess.
I don’t think I’ve got the patience that Kevin has.
We’ve got it.
I mean, this is one of the things that I’m really curious once he gets going and is using it regular.
I really want to hear Kevin’s opinion on the differences between the two as far as using it.
I think all of us FDM guys take it for such granted that you could just grab it off as soon as that printer is done, grab it off the bed, yank it off and put it into use right away.
Frank
Well, and the funny thing to me is Kevin actually said the words, SLA is easier before we started recording.
I feel like, yeah, but at the same time, there’s so much more complexity than with FDM that I’m curious about his…
Kevin
What I think what I said was setting up the SLA printer is easier.
Frank
Yeah.
I think that’s…
Maybe I’m misremembering.
I will accept that’s probably what you actually said.
Kevin
And if that’s not what I said, that is definitely what I meant.
Frank
Okay.
Fair.
Kevin
Setting it up was easier…
Chris
because I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more post-processing.
Kevin
Definitely.
I’m willing to bet that I will come to appreciate the ease of just taking something off the print bed and putting it into use.
Frank
Well I’m thinking more just the complexity of having an awareness of the chemistry that goes into it.
Now, you can’t customize colors as easily as you can with SLA, but once again, if you’re going to paint it, it doesn’t matter what color of the plastic is.
Kevin
That’s true.
Andy
If you can print it out of PETG, you could pop it off the bed and stick it right in your mouth.
Chris
Do you need to pop it in the mouth?
Frank
This has been an interesting week, Andy.
I blame you.
Actually, no, maybe I should blame Chris.
We didn’t have Chris to break in on you as often as the last time we recorded.
You found a new tangent.
Chris
Family engagements.
I’m sorry.
Frank
Yeah.
No, no.
We don’t blame you at all.
Chris
I’m saying “sorry.”
Frank
I thought you were saying “family engagements.”
I think that is our indication that we should probably call it.
Kevin
I think so.
Andy
Yeah.
Things are getting weird.
Frank
Full circle at least twice?
Kevin
Getting weird?
Andy
Yeah you window lickers are kind of freaking me out a little.
Chris
Anyway, I would say that like 80% of my prints end up being family requests and things since I’ve got it.
Andy
Really?
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
I print a lot for my wife.
Not necessarily as a request, but I should have thought of it earlier.
I literally pulled it off my printer this morning.
I’ve got this rose that I found.
It’s a bloomed rose.
Because I had some pink leftover from the holidays, I was like, oh yeah, I’ll print her off a rose.
I actually did print her one before I started with the Easter stuff, but I decided to print her a second pink rose.
Andy
Nice.
Kevin
Nice.
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
Cool.
Andy
That’s sweet.
Frank
Yeah.
Well, in case you haven’t noticed, she and I have this whole thing going on so…
Andy
Oh.
So that’s why you did the marriage and stuff.
I was wondering what was up with that?
Frank
I mean, you know…
Andy
It seemed like a lot of work for something.
Andy
I’m just not seeing the end to it, but he’s referring to himself as the beast here.
Frank
So I mean, actually, I’m not going to say that because she does listen, but there are plans.
All right.
Well, we’d like to thank everybody for listening to the very end.
If you like, yeah, see, that’s what I missed.
If you like what you hear, please give us all the stars and subscribe.
We are available through a whide variety of podcast vendors and are easy to share.
If you have feedback or if you have content requests, please let us know.
You can find us in our Facebook group, Amateur 3D Pod, or you can email us at panelists at amateur3dpod.com.
Our individuals for I’ve just been tripping all over this episode.
Andy
It’s okay.
The nose will stop bleeding after a little while.
Frank
Yeah.
But what do I do about all the scrapes all over my face?
This pretty thing.
Anyway, for individual feedback, you can email us at Franklin, Kevin, Andy, or Chris at amateur3dpod.com.
The music was written Buckner and OpenAI’s whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you can find linked in the description.
Our panelists are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber, and Andy Cotta.
And until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Chris
Sign off, are you suckers?
Andy
The layer lines go in the wrong directions.